156 Obituary Jfotice. 



Art. V. Obituary Notice. 



Died, in London, on the 24th of Januarj^, 1837, J. Sabine, Esq., late 

 Secretary of the London Horticultural Society: he was in the sixty- 

 seventh year of his age, and his death is universally regretted. The 

 following brief sketch of his connection with the Horticultural Society, 

 and his separation from the same, we extract from a memoir of Mr. 

 Sabine, in the Horticultural Journal. 



" Mr. Sabine was a man so well known among gardeners, as well as 

 in all the higher circles of society, that we need scarcely describe his 

 habits or his person, and few people in his sphere of life have been 

 more regretted. The two societies which seem to have enlisted among 

 their members all the loose turbulent spirits in the metropolis, the Hor- 

 ticultural and the Zoological, were, notwithstanding all that has been 

 said and written, under obligations which they could never have repaid; 

 but while respected by all whose respect is desirable, Mr. Sabine had 

 the honor of being opposed by some, who envied him the station which 

 he held in the estimation of the public, and sought, by means which Ave 

 have seen defeated, to deprive him of the honors he had earned in the 

 offices he filled. We who enjoyed the confidence and friendship of the 

 deceased, have not unfrequently observed the contrast between the office 

 of honorary secretary of the Horticultural Society, as filled in his time, 

 and occupied now; and though we can find twenty errors committed by 

 the former, the office, with all its errors, was respected. The chief 

 fault in Mr. Sabine was, that of paying too much attention to promises, 

 and relying too much on public professions. Had one half the wealthy 

 people who encouraged his proceedings on the gardens of the society 

 kept their words, and given the liberal assistance they promised, the 

 society would not have been disgraced by exposure, nor degraded by 

 the change of management. Mr. Sabine's notion of the Horticultural 

 Society of London was, that its gardens should be the best of the kind, 

 and the collections worthy of such a national repository. It was his 

 misfortune that those who admired his plan, and prompted his proceed- 

 ings, were the last to follow up the good work by producing the requi- 

 site funds; and the personal opposition so industriously got up against 

 him, and even attempted to be planted in tiie Zoological Society, by a 

 few unprincipled busy-bodies, arose from the natural enmity of the vain 

 pretenders, who envied him the natural influence which talent and in- 

 tegrity gave him over almost all the classes. When the Dean of Car- 

 lisle was in the chair at the Zoological Society, in March, 1830, a lout of 

 this description, a Mr. Valentine Duke, made a violent attack on Mr. 

 Sabine, which the Rev. Chairman was about to repel, when Lord Auck- 

 land gave the flippant blockhead a set down, which spoiled his oratory 

 for some time; for his lordship, after extinguishing the gentleman's 

 light, paid the highest compliment to the good sense, the zeal and at- 

 tention which Mr. Sabine had shown to the institution, and hoped he 

 would continue there. Yet those proceedings did not appear to ruffle 

 Mr. Sabine's mind in the least. In the same month the famed commit- 

 tee of inquiry into the aflfairs of the Horticultural Society made its re- 

 port; and a Mr. Kerr, who liked much to hear himself talk, tauntingly 

 accused Mr. Sabine of being secretary, president, council, and gardener 

 of the society, and moved a vote of censure upon him the moment the 

 report had announced his resignation; and as dirty business can be done 

 best in the dark, it was proposed to vote it by ballot. It was on that 

 occasion that an excellent man, Sir Thomas Acland, said, the society 



